Scott Jurek is known as one of the ultra runner in the country and
he has peculiar habits. At the start of every race, he always let out a
bloodcurdling shriek, and after he won, he’d roll in the dirt like a
hyperactive hound. Then he’d get up, brush himself off, and vanish back to
Seattle until it was time for his war cry to echo through the dark. Until D-2 weeks, no one did not know what Scott was up to, so word of his
plans only began to spread a little more than a month before the race.
When the American runners convened in El Paso before traveling to Mexico, the author had no idea if he was leading a platoon or hucking
solo. I checked into the airport Hilton, made arrangements for a ride across
the border at five the next morning, then doubled back to the airport. The
runners were pretty much waste their time.
Jenn
“Mookie” Shelton and Billy “Bonehead” Barnett, a pair of twenty-one-year-old
hotshots who’d been electrifying the East Coast ultra circuit. Jenn and Billy
had only started running two years before, but Billy was already winning some
of the thoughest 50ks on the East Coast, while “The young and beautiful Jenn
Shelton,” as the ultrarace blogger Joey Anderson called her, had just clocked
one of the fastest 100-mile times in the country.
Barefoot Ted
seemed to be the Bruce Wayne of barefoot running, the wealthy heir of a
California amusement-park fortune. Barefoot Ted believed we could abolish foot
injuries by throwing away our Nikes, and he was willing to prove it on himself.
